


I Know How the Flowers Felt

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, it's just one but its kinda detailed, thts abt neil and its referenced every now and then but not detailed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: Part One: A grieving boy relearning his way through lifePart Two: 15 years later





	I Know How the Flowers Felt

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I can actually say this fic was inspired by a talk I had with my mom about this movie gkfbfmsnf
> 
> Title from Robert Frost's "Lodged"

"Lodged"

>   
>  The rain to the wind said,  
>  'You push and I'll pelt.'  
>  They so smote the garden bed.  
>  That the flowers actually knelt,  
>  And lay lodged -- though not dead.  
>  I know how the flowers felt.

Todd remembers the snow between his fingers. Remembers Charlie, or was it Knox?, pressing it against his face to calm him down. He remembers the weight of them all against his back, holding him down, telling him it would be all right. He remembers the air nipping his cheekbones and his tears sticking to his face and his voice catching in his throat.

He remembers running, retching, slipping; remembers never wanting to go back to that damn school.

He remembers running into forever with nothing but an ill-fitting cloak and pyjamas on. Shouting for a boy who wouldn't come back to him. For some piece of him that set with the sun and wouldn't place itself back with its return.

He remembers having to watch the sun rise, too. Remembers the pangs in his chest, Charlie finally coming to get him, brushing the snow out of his hair, looking as utterly broken as he felt, crying, cursing, but faithfully dragging him back inside.

He pushes that all away, though, the next time he sees his parents, or maybe he pulls it so close that it compresses his lungs. Maybe that was why it was hard to tell them. To tell them he wasn't going to medical school, or law school, or wherever they'd tried to send him, of all the things he remembers, that isn't one of them.

He tells them that he loves words; loves, as Keating would say, letting them drip from his lips like honey. He wants to pursue a life that meant he could taste that honey whenever he pleased, and he couldn't let anything get in the way of that.

He remembers his mother crying, so happy to see him stand up for himself, but so scared of what the world would do to someone with a soul so gentle and no hot-shot career to protect him.

He remembers his father running his hands over his face and eyes and hair and stubble. All over, those hands raced, unsure of what to do. Finally conceding, as long as he finished Welton.

He calls Jeff two days after. Hands trembling. Eyes still watery. He remembers the click of the line, the warm greeting. He remembers regurgitating what felt like the entire English language into their scuffed receiver. He remembers the sliver of peace that settled over him when his brother just laughed and told him he always knew their was a little rebellion in him.

He goes back to Welton three days after that. 

There's a moment, as he takes the stairs, that he hears the stomping of feet above him, and for that moment, he closes his eyes, and waits to hear Neil's voice. For Shakespeare or Frost or Thoreau to make their way down the stairs on the coattails of stale air. For a face with familiar glasses and an even more-so familiar grin to lean over the railing and shout down to him with some profound and life-altering quote or a warm hello that seeps to his bones.

But none of it comes.

He trudges up, up, up, the stairs, and one by one, a petal falls from the flowers in his rib cage, until there's nothing left, just an uncomfortable flutter in his stomach.

Charlie peeks put of his door, smiles, even if it's tight, and leans back in. Meeks waves, pushing his glasses up his nose, before disappearing behind Charlie. Pitts and Knox make appearances too, and Todd wonders if he's the last to arrive.

Well, not quite, he knows.

He braces himself. Standing in front of their - _his_ \- door feels like, feels like. Like flying. But when he rests his fingers around the door knob, when he turns it, pushes it forward, he can feel the echo of crashing rocking through his body.

He can feel the snow on his cheeks again, in his hair, on his tongue. Smell the cold, too, hear it whistle past him. He stands stock still, looks over the bare mattress to his right, and lets the tears slip easily down his cheeks.

He thought it would be easy. No, not easy. But not this _hard_ either. It's like the diamond-patterned quilt top holds all of his memories and is pelting him with them, one by one.

He drops his bag, it lands somewhere inside the threshold, but that's all he registers. He makes his way over to his bed; it's just as he left it, crumpled, a hasty retreat evident, and gingerly sits.

He doesn't even kick off his shoes before he pulls his feet up and hugs his knees to his chest. He doesn't bother to take off his heavy coat or brush his hair out of his eyes. He just sits there, letting his crash rip from his chest and bounce around the room.

It feels so much bigger now, he notes. He remembers how small it felt those months ago when he was chasing a boy with wild laughter and a matching wild flame in his heart. Todd remembers he hadn't much minded.

He minds the room's size now.

It's only a few minutes later, once the tears are sticking to his chin and shirt and pants, that someone ventures into the room.

Todd wipes at his eyes quickly with the sleeve of his sweater, but the newcomer stops him. 

"Just me," Charlie says.

And Todd stops trying to clean himself; Charlie would be the last to judge him.

The bed dips with the added weight, but holds fast, letting Charlie shimmy up to Todd's side. He doesn't move to offer a comforting hand, or put his arm around Todd's shaking shoulders. In fact, Todd is sure he won't even speak, until he does.

"I miss him too, Todd."

"I know," Todd replies quietly, he can already feel his voice reverting back to that old whisper.

"No, you don't. He was my best friend, and he put up with all of my bullshit even when a lot of other people would have left, simply because he believed in me. He loved me through the rough times and he smiled with me through the good ones. He had a piece of me the way no one else did, and when he- he took that with him." Tears were prickling in his voice; Todd hadn't ever seen him cry until that night, didn't know if he'd be able to stand to see it again.

"But just like you don't know what I'm going through right now, I have no idea what's going on in that pretty little head of yours." A smile like a wave tipped onto his lips, lulling in and out. "You and he, you two were special, one for the ages, and I'll never understand what that feels like. But I wanted to tell you that, damn it, Todd, if you need me I'm across the hall. Don't keep all this shit bottled up."

And then he was gone. Retreating like the waves of his lips.

 

\-----

 

Todd lasts two days back at Welton.

It starts as a tremor in his hands during first period when he passes by the desk that should have held a tired, but rambling Neil Perry.

It continues, in second and third period, with the feeling of a cold sweat on the back of his neck and above his lip even though there's no moisture on him.

By fourth period he has a ringing in his ears that's loud enough that he misses the last 10 minutes of class.

The tremor and the phantom sweat and the incessant ringing is enough to cause fear to rise in his throat, trying to snuff out his airway.

He barely manages to snatch up his book and stumble from the room without too much incident.

The fear rises higher, higher, like a hand around his throat, his lungs. He doesn't know where he is, he's disoriented beyond belief, every hallway looking the same.

He just wants his bed. He wants to lie down, to let this pass. It's happened a hundred times before, he just has to let it run its course somewhere quiet, somewhere safe.

His vision blacks out on one of the landings between sets of hardwood stairs. He has enough of a mind to push himself against a wall before he slumps to the ground, hands still shaking, but it takes all of his energy.

He feels tears on his cheeks, or are they someone else's tears? Someone else's cheeks?

He can't stop shaking long enough to find out.

Deadly cold pricks at him now, and the ringing increases, louder than it's ever been before. He has to remind himself to breathe, but he barely manages that.

It's not fair, his mind finally seems to scream.

And oh, of course. That makes sense. That's why he's here, breaking down in the middle of the school day.

It isn't fair. It isn't fair that Neil is gone.

It isn't fair that he was the only person who made Todd feel like maybe he was worth more than what everyone he'd ever encountered while growing up had made him believe. It isn't fair that he left Todd with echoes of a happy life that he thought he'd get to live in forever. It isn't fair that he misses Neil so much it makes his chest ache. It isn't fair that he's sitting in the middle of the floor feeling like he's dying because of it.

It isn't fair that this is the first real feeling he's felt since he stepped foot back on campus.

No, it isn't fair, indeed.

"Todd."

He doesn't register it, too wrapped up in his own mind. Too wrapped up in feelings he didn't let himself feel with overbearing parents around.

"Todd, look at me," they say again, voice somehow commanding and friendly in the same breath.

Todd blinks, but his eyes are still blotted in ink. He blinks harder, feels the tears on his lashes, realizes where he is.

"Charlie," he gasps, a sob ripping through him. "Charlie he's _gone_."

"Shsh, I know, Todd. Come on, let's get you cleaned up," Charlie frowns, hauling Todd to his feet.

"It hurts, I-I feel like I can't _breathe_ ," Todd says, hand subconsciously going to his throat.

"It's okay, Todd, just breathe. Stephen, could you go tell the nurse that Todd won't be attending the rest of his classes for the day due to a migraine? And Pitts, can you find him some water, maybe a washcloth, too? Knox, help me get him up the stairs and into his bed, he'll need to sleep-"

"I can't go back there right now," Todd pipes in, tears still falling over his cheeks. He meets all of their eyes, all of their understanding, maybe slightly pitying eyes. "I can't- I see his bed and I think- just, please, Charlie."

"He can have mine for the night, or however long," Meeks offers, before darting off to find the nurse.

Pitts frowns at the scene before turning on his heel and setting off to find supplies.

Knox, ever tactful, quietly slips an arm around Todd and starts leading him toward the stairs. 

"I'm sorry, Todd," he whispers.

\-----

He recovers in Meeks' bed for two nights.

He tried to go back after the first night, had already moved his pillows back to his own bed, but Charlie wasn't having it.

Todd could see the fear in Charlie's eyes, hear the worry edging across his voice when he told him he was staying another night.

He couldn't say no, he knew what kind of fear it was.

The fear of having to wake up Meeks and Knox and Pitts in the middle of the night. The fear of having to look at two empty beds instead of one. The fear of loss.

Todd wasn't sure how to tell Charlie not to be afraid, how to find the right words to say that. He hoped his actions said everything he wanted to when he let Meeks swap their pillows around for one more night.

\----

After those nights, body resting in a simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar bed, something seemed to shift in his friendship with Charlie.

They spent most of their time together, going over schoolwork in the library, congregating in one room or the other to listen to bad music and not talk for what seemed like hours.

It's not like the time he spent with Neil; voices don't travel softer than hands, jokes aren't shared against almost pressing lips, bodies aren't lying side by side in a bed made for one.

No, these times are quiet. Todd had never met someone who filled a room quite like Neil, in both silence and commotion, didn't think he ever would again, so it's no surprise that this quiet is different. 

This quiet is in a way that feels like being rescued from choppy waters. They rarely speak, and they don't expect the other to respond if they do. 

No expectations, that's what these times are. They're silent, and they're a reprieve, and they're the only thing keeping Todd sane. Charlie, too, it seemed.

Charlie had made silence some habitual thing he couldn't seem to kick. He took silences like cigarette breaks, letting the time whisper away from him like smoke.

At first, they had all been concerned. Bolder than life itself Charlie Dalton, quiet? That wasn't right.

But he'd confessed one night, under the cover of shadows and moonlight, that he didn't know how to not be okay. He'd always been expected to be okay, to be bubbly, to be cracking jokes, to be Charlie, and now he's imploding and he doesn't know how to handle it because no amount of jokes and being Charlie will bring Neil back. 

And Todd had nodded, had told him he understood, had told him it was okay to not be okay. And then the silence had persisted, but Todd finally understood that they were Charlie's fits of tears, his anger and sadness, his grief.

So Todd had sat with him, not bothering to go back to his room that night. And Todd had continued to sit with him, through every impromptu silence, through every minute he laid in his bed and stared at the ceiling, through every second of eyes closed so tight he worried they'd burst. 

Because Charlie listened to his screams and his tears and his panic attacks at two a.m. and he deserved to have someone listen back, even if it was listening to quiet.

\----

Even though it was months after the fact, months after the acceptance and the acute grief, Todd's mind hadn't fully adjusted. Or maybe it was his heart.

He still had trouble sleeping. He always had, but it was worse after the fact. He missed hearing rustling covers and gentle breathing and even the late night scratching of a pencil on paper long after lights out. He missed warm skin pressed against his and soft, dozing breaths in the crook of his shoulder, the feel of a heartbeat against his side. He missed it all so much that sometimes he would forget what he missed and just be swallowed in sadness. Sadness without a name was the worst kind, he found.

Maybe it was so easy to forget because he barely slept. Maybe it was residual childhood naivety. Maybe it was any number of things, but somehow, he managed to forget for a few moments every now and then.

Those moments always looked the same. A lonely boy tosses and turns until finally he stops, resigning himself to no sleep. He sighs and he runs his tongue over his teeth and he rolls to pose a question that is bred by sleepiness and moonlight to the person who should be in the bed next to him. He sees emptiness, but doesn't feel sorrow until he finds an abandoned desk too. And then the tears come, but he welcomes them if only because they bring sleep soon after.

He'd been offered the chance for a new roommate, but the thought of someone else in Neil's space, in his bed, at his desk, it was wrong. Todd had declined that offer, letting it be laughed off as him wanting to have more room to himself.

He didn't want the room, he wanted the echoing memories to stay as they were, untouched.

\----

He gets a little better, day by day, week by week, but it still hurts. It still calls to him, too. He takes pills to help him sleep, and so it can't call to him then. It has to find other ways, and it does find them.

They're minor, really, but they somehow pluck harder than the major things, the looks of pity he sometimes still gets, or the condolences, or the whispers about that one Welton boy that he hears in passing.

It finds him in the caverns of the library, rustling between pages of books filled to the brim with emotion and honey. It finds him every time he goes to mark a poem that he thinks Neil would like, only to remember that's an opinion he'll never find out. 

It finds him one day when he's let all his guards down. When he's in wrinkled khakis and an unbuttoned shirt that reveals a ribbed white undershirt. It finds him in the form of a piece of lined paper, ragged around the edges but unmistakable as having been stolen from that _damn_ desk set. The words are cramped, written quick in his favorite pen, in his familiar scrawl, and then squirreled away for a different day that never came. 

_Show Todd!_

Todd bites his lip, opening anymore windows or doors of himself that it could possibly make its way in through, and throws a welcome mat down at every entrance.

It's been a while since he cried over it, for him. Tears are hot and energetic and require so much more than he has to give these days, and he never was willing to indebt himself to them, but he doesn't mind this time.

He takes the paper and smooths it out in his palm.

How many of these did he miss out on? How many poems were out there, waiting for him, waiting for nothing? What kind of lazy days spent trading poems and gentle, domestic touches were ripped from the work in progress patchwork of his life and thrown away?

He traced the letters, a softly hooked s, an h and o that traveled together, a rolling w; a t like a dagger and a lonely o. Two ds that were barely in the correct shape.

He brushed away the tears, taking care as not to spill them on the note. He tucked that away in his pocket, for a time made of closed doors and pillows that listened and sheets that had held plenty of tears. 

The poem in question glided under his finger, imprinting into his fingertip, an arrow slung into a bow. He commited it to memory after two readings, and then he closed the book and returned it to its proper shelf. And then he left the library, not knowing he'd never step foot into those four walls again as a Welton student.

\-----

The months that follow that day bring reprieve in the form of damnation. Teachers thumping textbooks onto desks, notes spilling into the margins of the sheets and sheets of paper he accumulates.

There's no time to remember, or to forget. They're months of static, of flowers peaking out of snowbanks, of restless sleep and peaceful dreams amd vice versa.

But he makes it through. By some miracle, he slides under a universal stitch and secures another piece in his patchwork. His grades are comfortable enough that a cap and gown is purchased, comfortable enough that he gets pats on the back from his uncles amd father's friends, a call from Jeff, tears from his mother.

Comfortable enough that he's asked to reconsider his plans post-Welton. He doesn't. Just further cements them with every alternative proposition.

He makes it to graduation day, all done up in something that looks like silk but feels like hell. It's terribly hot out that day, even worse inside the grand hall with too many bodies producing too much heat.

He walks first, across the stage. Not just of the Poets, but of everyone. Anderson, it was the first time that name had held power. He thought that after he walked across the stage, after the empty booklet was handed to him, his reprieve would wash away, but it didn't, not quite.

Of them, Charlie walks next. He grins at Todd, at Pitts and Knox too, gives a special beam to Meeks, but that's as far as he goes. No torn shirts and lightning bolts today, he's somber, but he's joyful; there's a bittersweet pride in his eyes as he shakes the headmaster's hand. He doesn't have to be on all the time, he can take a slow moment, and Todd can tell that's exactly what he needed.

Meeks goes soon after, something goofy enough in his walk to elicit a small chuckle, but not enough for his diploma to continue to reside within Welton's old filing system.

Knox manages to make it up and over and back without falling on his face, as the boys had been joking he would. That, in and of itself, was a victory.

With each smiling Poet, Todd's tension eases. The guilt and the hurt and the sadness aren't coming back to suckerpunch him now that the distraction's over, no. They're there, but they're not so angry. They're resigned.

He does cry though, as Pitts' name is called. Because the name before it wasn't Perry. Because there's an empty space everywhere he looks in this damn school and he never got used to it, never learned to move around it, move through it. The space follows him like a hand on the shoulder and he hates it almost more than anything, but not as much as he hates that school.

But the tears don't stay, because soon they're standing and they're marching and they're no longer students they're almuni. They're not children they're adults.

That school is no longer killing Todd Anderson, taunting him with emptiness. He shakes the hand off his shoulder and he smiles for all the pictures his mother wants.

Because by the time darkness began to fall, Todd had said all his goodbyes and he'd loaded his things into a clunker he'd purchased with preemptive graduation presents from elderly relatives worth more than all the items he had combined.

By the time the moon had hit her peak, Todd Anderson had left Hellton and all its emptiness behind. He was ready to start again. To collect honey on his lips with a worn out note on stolen paper in the pocket of his pants.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell with me about these boys on tumblr @luluthelich


End file.
